Monthly Archives: February 2008

More Snow

Arrived overnight… this photo was taken at 4 am

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Monday Morning Musings

Change seems to be the word of this election season. But is change always a good thing? Should change just happen, regardless of the consequences?

Mrs. Clinton is running on change, but she also wants to go back to the 1990’s when her husband was president. She speaks of her 35 years of experience (which is impossible for Mr. Obama as he would have had to have started in politics by age 11 or so to even match Mrs. Clinton).

Then too, since Mr. Bush can not and Mr. Cheney chose not to run for the office of President in 2008, change is automatic.

Castro has announced that he does not aspire to and will not accept the office of President. This is a change that is not a change. A year and a half ago he announced that his brother Raul would be running the country because Fidel wasn’t feeling well. This new announcement only solidifies that. And the change to Raul didn’t really change anything for the Cubans did it?

Of course some change is good. Changing your clothes when they are dirty is good. Changing your diet when your current diet may not be the healthiest for you is good. Changing a baby’s diaper when soiled is a very good thing.

If you can make change that will save money or increase efficiency – or both at once – such as changing your brand of dish soap to one that works better and costs less than your current brand is a good thing.

Changing your brand of dish soap to one that costs more and doesn’t work as well is not.

Especially when you throw away a perfectly good bottle of dish soap to use the new one.

I guess what I’m saying is don’t just go changing things to change things. Look at what you want to change, look at what effecting the change will entail, look at what the consequences of the change will be. Then decide whether to make the change or not.

Stony Brook Survey

Chris Weber at SUNY-Stony Brook is looking for people to answer a survey. Musing Minds has participated in this before and we are pleased to participate again.

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The purpose of this survey is to examine how people think and feel about the political issues, parties, and candidates in the upcoming election. In the survey, you will be asked a series of questions about two political candidates, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. We are very interested in how individuals that find information on the web think about politics, and your participation would be greatly appreciated. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.

Click here to take the survey:

http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/crweber/TAKESURVEY/election_2008.htm

Please feel free to contact Chris Weber (crweber@notes.cc.sunysb.edu) at Stony Brook University with any questions or concerns. Thanks for your help!

At Chris’ request, comments for this post are closed.

Monday Morning Musings

I’ve been achy and sick and have a lot of homework today so here are some links:

Althouse got a little more ice and snow than we did about 2 hours drive southeast… Pretty pictures.

Overlawyered, as always, brings us interesting legal stories such as the William Lerach saga (start here and more from here), traffic cams, and litigation lottery awards such as Ford being responsible to the tune of $6.5 million for the injuries caused to a driver who was thrown from his truck after the tread peeled off his tires. The passengers were wearing seatbelts and sustained minor (if any) injuries. The driver wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.

VK has a new Caption Contest!

And one of these will keep the Siberian from getting into the back of the house to pee on a bed (which he has been known to do if he gets mad) but will still allow the cats and the Shih Tzu access…

This one is lazy and doesn’t like to jump the gate to the back of the house so she sits there and cries until someone opens the gate for her.

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No Surrender

Kurt Westergaard and the Jyllands-Posten newspaper are still being threatened over the publication of 12 cartoons.

Captain Ed tells us that newspapers in Denmark have reprinted the cartoon in solidarity with Kurt and the Jyllands-Posten in light of the arrest of three people who were planning to assassinate Kurt over the drawing.

jyllands-posten mohammed
This is Kurt’s contribution:
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Michelle has more.
I’ve had a lot of traffic today to my blogburst post of 2 years ago through Google Image Search.

Monday Morning Musings

It’s scary that the woman who would be President of the United States feels free to pressure a media outlet to suspend and/or fire an employee who says something on air that she doesn’t like. Howard Kurtz writes:

In case there was any doubt, using a prostitution metaphor for the daughter of a presidential candidate is not a good career move.

MSNBC suspended correspondent David Shuster yesterday for an undetermined period for making a disparaging on-air remark about Chelsea Clinton. Meanwhile, officials in her mother’s campaign raised the possibility of punishing the news channel by boycotting future debates.

While filling in as a host Thursday, Shuster was discussing the 27-year-old’s role in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign with two guests when he asked: “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”

In my opinion, the comment was pretty innocuous. The reference wasn’t to prostitution even with the use of the word “pimp”. Isn’t there a TV show called “Pimp My Ride”? From the urban dictionary:

pimping

More commonly used nowadays as making something cool or better.
Yeah, I was totally pimping up my profile today!

Sure MSNBC has the right to suspend or even fire an employee for something he says on air. The first amendment refers to government retaliation for speech, but this woman would be President of the United States. What happens when someone says something not so innocuous that’s against her or her administration? When she is the face of the government?

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya (to Vizzini):

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Chris Lynch has some more musings over at A Large Regular.

3,2,1 Blastoff!

And Atlantis is on her way to the International Space Station.

These launches never cease to amaze me.

ÜberTuesday, Paczki Day

So I went and voted in Illinois’ primary. For the Republicans, we have the candidates themselves, and then 2-4 delegates in each Congressional District. Mine has three. Then there are also three alternate delegates and other offices that are up for the primaries too.

Voting for the candidate means nothing on the Republican side. Just the delegates that are pledged to the candidates count.

So, I voted for Fred Dalton Thompson as a candidate and voted for Mitt Romney’s three delegates and alternate delegates.

And it’s Paczki Day! (Poonch-key). A fried dough filled with fruit or custard and dusted with powdered sugar. Paczki are made to use up the last of the lard, fruit, and sugar before Lent.

Paczki

Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, the Lenten season encompassing both St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day this year.

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